Home equity loans and HELOC’s can also help you pay off car loans, credit cards, or other personal debt, while many times even enabling you to pay a lot less in interest. This is particularly true in the case of credit cards, which are unsecured. Home Equity and HELOC loans are both secured by your home, so the interest rate is typically much lower.

What are they?

A Home Equity Loan provides the opportunity to borrow against the equity in your home. The advantage of a home equity loan is that by using your home as collateral, you often are able to borrow money at a lower interest rate, saving you money. For this type of loan, you choose a one-time amount to borrow, and the interest rate on your loan is fixed (it stays the same for the length of your loan).

As a borrower, you may also have the option of securing a home equity line of credit, or HELOC. This works more like a credit card in that it makes a certain amount of credit available to you as you need it, for a limited term. This allows you to borrow as much or as little as you need (within your credit limit). A HELOC also has an adjustable rate that changes with the market, which means that your payments will fluctuate with changes in interest rates and will vary as your balance changes. A HELOC makes sense if you need to borrow smaller amounts over a longer period of time, whereas a home equity loan is better if you need a large amount of money all at once.

To see if you qualify for any of these loan options, stop in or call! Our banking professionals will be happy to explain the process to you and answer any questions you may have.